Softpedia has put two and two together and has indeed made four. They pick up on Todd H’s recent post to the Windows Home Server Blog rallying the troops to enter Code2Fame, noting that the deadline for add-in entries is towards the end of August.
They write:
“On June 12, the Release Candidate of Windows Home Server went live. This illustrated the fact that Microsoft is indeed close to releasing Windows Home Server to manufacturing. And the Code2Fame Challenge time table is associated with the availability of Windows Home Server. In this context, the final product could be just two, three months away.”
Let’s see… we have a new to market operating system, an opportunity for OEMs to create a great new hardware sales opportunity, and… hang on, the holiday sales period ahead of us! It’s almost as if Microsoft have prepared WHS to be ready in August just to ensure they can ship the software out to hardware manufacturers to give them time to build their hardware ready to sell to us in December. It’s like, they’ve planned this all along!
Now, just because the product ships in Q3, doesn’t mean it’ll be immediately available - MS can send images out to their partners straight away, but it takes a few weeks to press the discs and print the packs that will end up as the Systembuilder Packs we cn buy. So I reckon we’ll be looking at October before any of us can get our hands on the final build of Windows Home Server V1. (That is, unless the team decide to offer a download to testers at RTM - my hunch is that they may, but it’ll be limited).
Unlike Windows Vista in 2006, I’m sure WHS will be shipped in time for the holiday season, but didn’t we already know we were looking at a Q3 RTM? Great sleuthing, Softpedia! 
Leave a Reply